Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 10-56741 has disclosed a battery charging structure of a small electric vehicle that allows charging of a battery from a power supply outside the vehicle. In this battery charging structure, when a power cord for charging is pulled out from a cord reel while a main switch is off, control for charging the battery starts in response to such pulling.
According to this battery charging structure, it is not necessary to switch the control between running control and charging control by a dedicated switch or the like so that an operation can be simple, and such an error can be prevented that the vehicle runs during a charging operation.
However, in order to prevent theft or the like, the vehicle has generally employed security measures, e.g., to prevent starting of a vehicle system when a key is not verified. The technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 10-56741 is effective at saving time and effort required for starting the system for the charging, but this publication has not particularly discussed a relationship of the system start for the charging with respect to functions employed as the security measures for the system start.